Wednesday, 13 April 2016

#44: Legend Of The Shadow Warriors

LEGEND OF THE SHADOW WARRIORS

Stephen Hand

Reviewed by Mark Lain

With his
first FF offering, #40 Dead of Night,
Stephen Hand gave us something quite special – a decidedly dark gothic horror
gamebook with some often quite warped ideas that made for a really satisfying
playing and reading experience. In his second outing, Legend of the Shadow Warriors, Hand would prove that his first book
was not a one-off and that he was a serious gamebook-writing force to be
reckoned with.

Opening with
a dark nursery rhyme, you immediately get the impression that this is going to
be a classy and well thought-out piece of work and the large amount of
background detail in the introduction adds early credence to this theory. Set
after the events of Steve Jackson’s The
Tasks of Tantalon (ie many years before any other FF gamebook), you play a
mercenary who fought on the side of Royal Lendle in the Wars of the Four
Kingdoms. Peace has now been established and you start out at an inn in Royal
Lendle looking for adventure. You run into a man from Karnstein (to the far
South of the region) who tells you that the town is under threat from a
terrible foe and, on the offer of 100 GP reward, you agree to help and so set
off with him and his cronies to save the day. First you take a trip around
Royal Lendle itself, ostensibly to buy equipment, but also, if you wish, to
have a bit of a look around and try to gather some info. On leaving the town,
you have to deal with an unpaid tax bill situation and then have your first
fateful encounter with the titular Shadow Warriors who, like five Seven Samurai types, all have their own
unique powers and ways of making your fight with them extra difficult. You can
only actually fight one and a roll of the dice determines which that is after
they have wiped your companions out. Survive this first big trial and you can
then head off on the quest proper in either a roughly south-westerly or
south-easterly direction to eventually reach Karnstein and try to save the
town.

This might
sound like fairly typical adventure questing stuff but what makes this book so
uniquely brilliant is the sheer variety and quality of the material on offer
here and the manner in which it is presented. Firstly, neither of the main
routes is the optimum path – you can go either way and still have a chance of
winning, although one route is rather more dangerous than the other. Plus, within
the two main routes are several sub-paths to add even more re-playability and
variety. Secondly, there are numerous secondary plots going on that can
variously help or hinder your progress (some are total red herrings as well) including
the tax collector Queensbury Woad coming after you for an unpaid tax debt in
Royal Lendle, tangling with Dr Kauderwelsch (Frankenstein basically) and her
experiments, the body-snatching Mandrakes and their (rather amusing) monthly
targets of body-snatching that they are trying to meet, the pumpkin-headed
Haggworts (the thing on the cover) that are tormenting the town of Hustings,
the Gorgon, a manipulative Pan-Terric Behemoth that is conning archaeologists
into helping it escape from where it is buried, a run-in with some veterans
from your opposing army that recognise you from the war days, and joining the
rather suspect Circus of Dreams – and that’s not all of it, these are just my
personal highlights! The third big plus of this book is your character who is
not a one-dimensional hero type but that rather has a purposeful and logical
background context which puts him/her in the situation they are in and also
allows for some moments of contextual consequence such as the encounter with
someone you fought back in the war and your tax evasion problems. This really
feels like a full experience of characterisation rather than you just playing
someone who is good at waving a sword around and getting treasure/killing
baddies in spite of the odds.

In structural
terms, the book follows the same rough design as Dead of Night did in that you trace your route along a printed map
in the front of the book which allows you to keep track of how far you have
come and have left to go. I don’t have a problem with this but it does give you
an indication of whether you are near the end which some might not like.
However, as you are familiar with the region you should know where Karnstein is
so this aspect does make sense. (Incidentally, for the gamebook historian, the
earlier gold dragon cover edition has a colour map on the inside cover whereas
the later black dragon version has a black-and-white map printed after the title
page.) The mechanics of the book are particularly sound and this is, for once,
a FF book that formally has special rules allowing for adjustors based on your
Weapon and Armour, rather than these being incidentals as you go along. You can
only carry one Weapon at a time, starting with a sword, but other options can
be found along the way, some of which will do extra damage to opponents in
combat. Lose your Weapon completely and you fight with a -1 Skill penalty until
you can get hold of a replacement. Conversely, you start without any Armour but
as and when you get some you can take reduced damage or even endure blows
without taking any wounds at all depending on what particular Armour you are
wearing. There is a downside to wearing Armour though as it impacts on Skill
tests due to its weight and or movement-restricting nature, plus the effects of
damage to your Armour are even factored in as Armour will be wrecked once it
has taken a defined number of blows. This is brilliantly designed and is
implemented very well indeed, adding a real RPG feel to this aspect. My only
question here would be why was an idea this good not adopted as standard in
subsequent FFs? Also built into the rules is the first explicit statement that
you need to Test Your Skill. Many previous books had veiled this by asking you
to roll two dice and get under or equal to your Skill to succeed, but had not
actually admitted that you were testing your Skill. This book sets this out
from the beginning, something that later FFs would also often finally do.

And it is in
Skill testing that this book shows one of its few flaws, as far too much
emphasis is put on this. In fact, if you have a low Skill you have almost no
hope of getting very far as failing the myriad of Skill tests is often fatal.
There are quite a few Luck tests too, but this is less of an issue as there are
lots of Luck bonuses to be found and, if you can get the Ring of Destiny, Luck
testing becomes more or less academic. Equally, the Ring of Destiny can make
combats a bit easy too but this is a good thing especially when taking on
multiple foes or any of the Shadow Warriors themselves. Attribute testing
aside, this book is actually pretty difficult in general but it never comes
across as oppressively hard, instead the difficulty is a challenge to be
relished as was the case in some of FF’s greatest “hard” books such as #6 Deathtrap Dungeon or #24 Creature of Havoc and you really do
want to beat it, although this book is nowhere near as hard as either of those
titles. The Shadow Warriors are all very tough to fight and all have special
adjustors to contend with and there is at least one endless death loop that you
can get stuck in. The final showdown with the main baddie, Voivod (who is using
the Shadow Warriors to achieve his ends) cannot be won without the Spear of
Doom and involves a unique gimmick of having to give him life rather than death
to defeat him, which involves rolling less than whatever the spear’s current
life force is at that point, a stat determined by you rolling 1d6 and adding 5
when you acquire it. This is a neat touch as it means that you are not totally
at the mercy of the author’s whims here and you can potentially have a very
powerful or very weakened spear from the get-go, a mechanic which has its own
randomised easiness or difficulty associated with it.

The final
section itself is very interesting for several reasons. Firstly, it is the only
part of this book that involves the normally very common 40s and 50s FF books’
trick of cheat-proofing with maths puzzles. Using a map of Karnstein’s
surroundings and any info you have gathered, you have to divine where Voivod is
and then render that location’s name into a corresponding hidden section using
a numerical code given on the page of a book that you have hopefully found.
Thankfully, the maths is not as arduous as normal in FFs as the numerical
values of the alphabet run from 1 thru 9 then repeat themselves, rather than
running from 1 thru 26 and you needing to try to match the later letters to
higher numbers, something which often scuppers the more mathematically spassed
players such as myself! As this is a key climactic moment I like the fact that
the hidden section trick has been reserved for this rather than being a
dominant factor throughout the book as is often the case in latter FFs.
Secondly, as it transpires that you are working as an organ of the Earth Gods,
you are required to give Voivod (Death, essentially) life to defeat him as death personified cannot logically suffer any
from more dying. Indeed, if he wounds you in regular combat he gains 2 Stamina
for every 2 you lose! Once you give him life by using the Spear of Doom he
turns back into a nice person and thus starts his rehabilitation (which
“begins” at paragraph 400 so isn’t actually part of the book, incidentally, but
does show that from start to absolute finish,
the plot and its ideas never abate.) This ending is probably one of the biggest
twists in any FF book and really does come as a surprise. Thirdly, to draw the
main plot thread and its recurring incident together and bring them to a tidy
conclusion, any Shadow Warriors that you have not yet destroyed completely have
to be killed before you can deal with Voivod himself, making finding the way of
destroying them for good earlier on in the game of extra importance.

Nothing in
this book, even the red herrings, seems to be filler material and every moment
of it is exciting, surprising, and often intriguing. As it is set much earlier
in the Titan timeline than the rest of the Titan FF books, there is a sense of
paganism in many places and the influence on the plot (and on you) of the Earth
Mother, the Horned God, and the Jack-in-the-Green really emphasise this. Much
is taken (or modified) from real folklore and this could work just as well set
on Earth as it does being set in Gallantaria, but its distancing time-wise from
the rest of the series makes this fit and work within the Titan concept far
better than you might expect it to. At no stage does any of this feel awkward
or at odds with the overall Titan mythos and SH is to be given due credit for
handing and integrating actual Earth mythologies into FF’s, by this point, very
established fantasy world identity.

Given what we
have just said, it is to be expected that the encounters in this book are
unlike those common to other FF books and the breadth of imagination on show
here is very impressive. Selected highlights include the aforementioned
Mandrakes (body-snatching plant things), the eerie pumpkin-headed Haggworts,
the Slygore (a primordial sludge elemental), the Crombane (“spawn of the dying
earth”), the Mahogadon (sort of primitive treeman with an attitude problem),
and the wonderfully-named Pan-Terric Behemoth. Furthermore, if you enter one
particular cave you will even meet (and potentially get stitched-up by) a
pathetic (and tricksy lol) specimen called Smegg that is basically Gollum.

Special attention
must be given to the superb inclusion that is the Mandrakes. Before I played
this book, I was aware that the Mandrakes were involved so I naturally assumed
that either they (or more probably, the Shadow Warriors) were the pumpkin-y
things on the book’s cover. Not so as there are two secondary and one primary
key creature types that form the core of the incidents in this book. The
Haggworts are terrorising a town in one possible direction, whilst the Mandrakes
are causing more widespread trouble on the other route. The primary baddies are
of course the Shadow Warriors who are unavoidable but the book is designed in
such a way that you are most likely to have to only deal with EITHER the
Mandrakes OR the Haggworts and not both, which emphasises the re-playability of
this book and makes both main routes very unique. The Mandrake incident is
longer and occurs in two main places, both of which are real tour de forces of
gamebook plotting – firstly, the town of Gornt has been over-run with them and
you need to quickly try to work this fact out before it is too late and,
secondly, the Circus of Dreams is their way of travelling from place to place
wreaking their mayhem. Joining the circus is an interesting moment in itself as
you try to trick your way in, but the real revelations come in the big top and
the mirror wagon where the real extent of the problem becomes apparent. If you
thought all they had done was wipe out Gornt’s population, you have got another
thing coming!

With as much
going on in this book as there is, obviously you have lots of options of
directions to take, places to explore, and nasty localised monster invasions to
be heroic and try to stop, however, on reaching Karnstein you discover that
time is also of the essence in stopping Voivod’s plan from progressing and if
you wasted too much time fiddling about you might just be too late, meaning you
need to be selective about what you get involved in and filter out the red
herrings early by repeat playing and meaningful mapping. In fact, if you arrive
especially quickly (not easy, given that you need to find key items to win)
this can work even more to your advantage, but the “arriving early” path is not
easy to master.

What strikes
you quite quickly in this book is the variety of weapons and armour available
to you as you go along (choose wisely, though, as the various adjustors and penalties
could cause you more problems than you’d think!) as well as the remarkable ease
of acquiring Provisions. There is no limit to how many you can carry and there
are a few moments where there is no fundamental limit (notwithstanding funds
etc) to how many you can collect. As with the power of the Spear of Doom (and
also the beneficial effects of drinking from the paganistic Wizard’s Well), you drive the amount and inherent necessary conservation of your starting gold (in this case, by rolling 2d6 and adding 12) which, again, removes
your being at the mercy of the author’s ability to make things harder than
necessary for you. Yes, you can start with hardly any money, but there is just
as much chance of you starting with a lot of money and I like the way SH is
throwing us an olive branch by including chance in governing some very important
key plot drivers.

Terry Oakes’
Haggwort cover image is one of the most sinister FF covers in the Puffin series
and the use of blue toning adds to the foreboding dusk effect of the picture. Only
the Haggwort’s carved pumpkin facial features glow evilly orange and really
stand out on the otherwise all-blue cover painting. Martin McKenna (FF’s great master
of gothic Hammer-esque art) provides the internal art and every image is
brilliant, emphasising the dark horrors that the book presents to you
throughout. There are, however, three images in particular that are stand-outs
for me, but to see two of them you will need to buy the mirror at Royal Lendle
market: the inside of the big top revealing the extent of the Mandrakes’ “join
us” propaganda, and the two-fold alternative images of the street scene in
Gornt, the first of which shows everything seemingly appearing normal, whilst the
second shows an exact duplicate image but with the Mandrake revealed for what
he really is. It is a real risk to essentially duplicate an image given the limited
number of pictures that can go in a FF book, but this is a master stroke that
works so well it blew me away the first time I saw it.

Legend of the Shadow Warriors is an exceptionally good gamebook. It
has exciting gameplay, is beautifully and carefully put together (without any
of the errors that blight the later books so much), fuses pagan folklore with
the Titan concept very skilfully, has ample re-playability, avoids the annoying
true path trap that can make you lose from very early on just by going the
wrong way, is difficult but in a motivating and very balanced way, and is very
appropriately paced. Most gamebook writers would avoid throwing so much A-grade
material into just one book, but SH really goes for it with this offering and
never lets us down. This is easily the best book from the generally very strong
40s part of the series and is definitely one of the better books in the series
as a whole. The Shadow Warriors are one of FF’s most lethal mobs of opponents
and you really dread your repeat run-ins with them, but they do eventually get
vanquished. More importantly though, the Mandrakes are such a bravura creation
that playing a supporting role is surely not enough to do them justice and,
sure enough, they would return (along with Dr Kauderwelsch) in the follow-up, #48 Moonrunner.

Definitely. It's a real shame the third book never appeared. Several of the books that came out after Moonrunner could easily have been foregone if it meant we could have had Blood Of The Mandrakes instead. It's a shame Wizard Books couldn't have tried to get it finished and published.

Why are these books set before the other Titan books? From the illustrations, I always assumed that they'd be set afterwards - people are all dressed like the Renaissance or even Georgian/Victorian period, which is more in keeping with Hammer Horror than hack fantasy!

What I like about the two 'same but different' illustrations in the mandrake segment, is that McKenna didn't just duplicate the same drawing with a few minor changes, but redrew the whole thing. That's dedication!